How to Provide Excellent Customer Service?

We’re All On the Fast Lane

In this fast-living society, people need to take care of work, family, bureaucracy and other responsibilities. Fast-food, instant messaging, speeding, going to a nearby shop by car instead of walking, or creating a shopping list on the train on the way home make just a short list of symptoms of time poverty.

Consequently, this time deficiency and the fast pace of life make us impatient. We want to see immediate results of our actions.

Consumers seeking customer service use social media because they expect a quick response. A study by J. D. Power proves that over 67% of customers seek help via social media. Another study proved that 42% of consumers expect a reply via social media within 1 hour.

Customer expectations regarding customer service are growing year by year as people expect a fast response

The truth is, the majority of customer service out there sucks. It gives you a chance to steal the spotlight and prove you know what customers want. Check our article on mistakes you should avoid when it comes to providing customer service!

But how? You’ll find out in a moment.

Know Where Your Customers Are

To provide an effective customer service, you need to know where your customers hang out. More specifically, what social networking sites they use. In most cases, companies provide social care via Facebook and Twitter, however, some brands address their customers also on LinkedIn, Pinterest, or Instagram.

The best way to find your customers is to use a social media monitoring tool like ours. It allows tracking relevant conversations across all social media out there. What’s more important, it also collects mentions without the official handle. Like here:

It’s relatively easy to provide customer support while you get a private message or your company has been mentioned in a comment in social media. Without social listening, one’s unable to provide an effective customer service as lots of customer queries and discussions go unnoticed without the official handle.

Find your company mentions with our free trial!

Know Your Pain Points

Find out about the most popular issues raised by your customers. Identify your pain points and get the broader perspective of problems your clients face. The easiest way to get the clear picture of the situation is to use social listening tool like ours. It allows not only listening but also analyzing the buzz your business generates. You can easily pick up the most frequent problems, draw conclusions and adjust your product or strategy.

Adjust Yourself

It matters whether you’re running a small, medium, or large business as usually, they receive a different amount of inquiries. Depending on the volume of queries, you need to devote a specific amount of manpower to handle your customers’ problems. Also, taking into account the volume of noise, you may need to implement a customer service platform to handle them more effectively.

Time is of the Essence

The response speed is vital to your customers’ satisfaction and your brand image. Great customer service is sooner or later appreciated by consumers and the industry.

Like in the case of Brand24. Our customers seem happy with our customer service. Customers facing troubles are often handled not only by our Customer Support, but also by our CEO or CRO!

Sloppiness doesn’t help your brand image and competition never sleeps. Even one but unnoticed issue may lead to a social media crisis and shake your reputation which can negatively affect your sales.

Consumers expect a timely and accurate response, preferably through the same channel. Period.

Decide How to Solve an Issue

Some sensitive issues regarding, for example, technical difficulties, payments or request cannot be handled in front of the public. Also, sometimes the 140 sign limit isn’t enough to provide a satisfactory answer. In such a case it’s advisable to move to a private conversation, meaning away from the public eye.

You can encourage a customer to contact you via private message. After the issue is solved, don’t forget to thank your customer for reaching out.

Make Use of Negative Comments

Receiving a negative feedback on your business’ Facebook timeline screams for your reply. It’s not only about your brand image but also your relationship with customers. Regardless of the negative comment, you can still make some lemonade with these lemons. Your customers need to feel taken care of. Show that you’re sorry and intent on helping out.

By the way, don’t miss our article on dealing with negative comments!

Conclusion

Consider implementing social listening tools like ours as it allows to provide an even better customer service by finding your customers’ queries without the official handle. Read how it works in the case of customer service or start a free trial right now!